Gingerbread Houses

The December 2009 Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to you by Anna of Very Small Anna and Y of Lemonpi. They chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ everywhere to bake and assemble a gingerbread house from scratch. They chose recipes from Good Housekeeping and from The Great Scandinavian Baking Book as the challenge recipes.

I once attempted homemade gingerbread houses, about 5 years ago. It was a horrible failure and I haven't thought of it since then. But with young boys, it sounded like a great holiday bonding activity, so I shored myself up and determined to try. (PS- I missed last month's challenge due to procrastination and travel. I will be posting an attempt, albeit very late, watch for it!)

I chose to make the Good Housekeeping recipe, since I love molasses and had it and whipping cream on hand. It made a delicious dough! I used a template I found online for the house pattern, it can be found here. I tried to make the simple caramel syrup for wall glue and failed. It just crystallized as the water evaporated. Oops. Well, luckily the royal icing worked wonderfully on my house!The roof stayed up!

However, I also thought I'd make multiple houses since there was a terrific amount of dough left over. I thought I'd just shave an inch of each side of the template and have a smaller house. It worked wonderfully until construction time. The roofs would not stay on, I finally determined my roof lines were just way to steep and repair attempts failed. Oh well. Lesson learned.

The roof stayed on this little house for about 5 minutes than slid off and couldn't be repaired.

We did have a lot of fun building these gingerbread houses, though it is quite time consuming! A full day was spent on it! Good memories and tasty gingerbread made for a good reward.

Spicy Gingerbread Dough (from Good Housekeeping)

2 1/2 cups (500g) packed dark brown sugar
1 1/2 cups (360mL) heavy cream or whipping cream
1 1/4 cups (425g) molasses
9 1/2 cups (1663g) all-purpose flour
2 tablespoon(s) baking soda
1 tablespoon(s) ground ginger

Directions

1. In very large bowl, with wire whisk (or with an electric mixer), beat brown sugar, cream, and molasses until sugar lumps dissolve and mixture is smooth. In medium bowl, combine flour, baking soda, and ginger. With spoon, stir flour mixture into cream mixture in 3 additions until dough is too stiff to stir, then knead with hands until flour is incorporated and dough is smooth.

2. Divide dough into 4 equal portions; flatten each into a disk to speed chilling. Wrap each disk well with plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 4 hours or overnight, until dough is firm enough to roll.

3. Grease and flour large cookie sheets (17-inch by 14-inch/43x36cm)

4. Roll out dough, 1 disk at a time on each cookie sheet to about 3/16-inch thickness. (Placing 3/16-inch dowels or rulers on either side of dough to use as a guide will help roll dough to uniform thickness.)

5. Trim excess dough from cookie sheet; wrap and reserve in refrigerator. Chill rolled dough on cookie sheet in refrigerator or freezer at least 10 minutes or until firm enough to cut easily.

6. Preheat oven to 300 degrees F (149C)

7. Use chilled rolled dough, floured poster board patterns, and sharp paring knife to cut all house pieces on cookie sheet, making sure to leave at least 1 1/4 inches between pieces because dough will expand slightly during baking. Wrap and reserve trimmings in refrigerator. Combine and use trimmings as necessary to complete house and other decorative pieces. Cut and bake large pieces and small pieces separately.

8. Chill for 10 minutes before baking if the dough seems really soft after you cut it. This will discourage too much spreading/warping of the shapes you cut.

9. Bake 25 to 30 minutes, until pieces are firm to the touch. Do not overbake; pieces will be too crisp to trim to proper size.

10. Remove cookie sheet from oven. While house pieces are still warm, place poster-board patterns on top and use them as guides to trim shapes to match if necessary. Cool pieces completely before attempting to assemble the house.

Chocolate Ice Cream

This is the first recipe from the cooking challenge my friend at Create Cakes and I are doing instead of joining the Daring Bakers right now. We haven't come up with a cool thing to call it yet but we have several yummy recipes to try!

Anyway, I haven't made ice cream in a long time, but this recipe was worthy. I had it last week for the first time and it was delicious. I was excited to try it out and see how it worked at my house. Plus I had extra heavy cream from my quiche last week.

The recipe is a variation from Desert Candy and her 21 day Ice Cream challenge. It is rich and sweet, very creamy and yummy.

Best Ever Chocolate Ice Cream

1 Cup Whole Milk
2 Cup Heavy Cream
3/4 Cup Sugar
3/4 Cup Cocoa
3 oz. Chocolate (I like DARK)
4 Egg yolks
Pinch of Salt

1. In a sauce pan, whisk together the Milk and Cream with the sugar, cocoa powder, and salt until smooth. Whisk together the egg yolks in a small bowl. Place the saucepan over medium heat and bring the mixture to a boil, stirring constantly. Drizzle a little bit of the milk mixture into the egg yolks, stirring to combine, then add the egg yolks in a slow stream back into the milk in the saucepan. Return the pan to the heat and cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. Do not let boil or it will curdle. Remove the mixture from the heat and immediately stir in the chopped chocolate, stirring until the chocolate is melted and combined.

2. Place the mixture in the refrigerator to chill thoroughly, at least 4 hours. Process the mixture in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's directions.


Yeah I didn't wait 4 hours before putting it in my little ice cream maker and letting L go to town on stirring. Oh well. It still came out wonderful. He loves to help in the kitchen and turning the crank on the ice cream mixer for 10 minutes is right up his alley. I did take a few turns stirring as well.

It is hard frozen today, but the photos aren't nearly as much fun. Flavor is still wonderful, with a sweetness at first and then a intense chocolate bite afterward. I used Lindt 70% cocoa dark chocolate bar in it. Yum!!

Banana cookies

Sunday Dessert Treat

From my MBASA cookbook:
Banana Cookies
3/4 c. shortening (used butter)
1 c. sugar
1 egg
1 1/2 c. flour
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
3/4 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
1 c. smashed bananas
1 3/4 c. quick oats
(optional) chocolate chips

Cream butter/sugar, add egg, mix. In a separate bowl, mix dry ingredients. Add to wet mixture, add bananas & quick oats, add chocolate cips. Bake at 400 F for 12-15 minutes.

So I got to watch these get made by my cousin & my kids. It was fun. Normally it's me with the 2 kids helping stir and add ingredients.

They taste like banana bread, but are so much easier to carry around! Plus you can call them "banookies". I think we have a new favorite way to eat bananas. :)

Using butter instead of shortening can have some ramifications - the cookies spread a bit more and may be crispier. But it worked fine with these cookies. For more info on it, The Prepared Pantry has a blurb about it at the bottom of the page in the link.

My MBASA cookbook comes from an organization I was lucky to be a member of for 2 years, while my husband got his MBA. It is one of those great group cookbooks that can't be bought anywhere. You have to know someone related to the group.